Jude cleared his throat. “What do you girls have to say for yourselves?” he asked sternly. “I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw you running across the pasture toward the pool hall, knowing Phil and Dexter had just killed Leah’s cattle. And on top of that, you didn’t admit to us that you knew they’d done it.”
The twins hung their heads, sniffling. “We—we were mad at them,” Alice began with a whimper.
“It was wrong to shoot her cows,” Adeline put in sadly, “and we wanted them to know we weren’t going to stand for it.”
“Soon as we got there and saw how—how drunk they were, we knew we’d been stupid to go there and confront them,” Alice admitted ruefully.
“We tried to fool them,” Adeline continued. “I said I had to use the restroom—so I could call you from the pay phone—and Alice tried to distract them by ordering a pitcher of beer.”
“But they figured us out.”
“The phone hadn’t rung but once before Dexter grabbed the receiver from me and slammed it down.”
Leah cringed, recalling the smelly, noisy pool hall and the type of restless, shiftless young men who spent time there. “Luckily, Stevie was in the phone shanty and when he answered the call, he heard enough loud music to figure out it was you at the pool hall,” she put in softly. “So we hitched up the rig and went there to be sure those boys didn’t leave with you.”
“Jeremiah and I had already called Sheriff Banks, and we were on our way, too,” Jude continued. He sounded less irate now, but still stern. “We were counting on distracting Phil and Dexter with a game of pool they believed they couldn’t possibly lose until the sheriff had time to search their truck for the gun.”
“Thank the Lord it all worked out the way we’d planned,” Jeremiah said, holding the twins’ gazes. “But I was appalled to hear that you’d told those fellows you were nineteen. And having heard about the revealing blouses you’ve worn—and seeing you there with beer mugs, and your hair down, wearing so much makeup, I had a hard time believing you were the sweet, obedient nieces I know you to be. You looked like Jezebels. Harlots.”
Leah cringed, but she understood why the bishop was telling the girls just how disappointed he was with their behavior. Alice and Adeline hung their heads, and it took them several moments to speak again.
“We’re sorry, and we promise never to wear those clothes or go anywhere near Phil and Dexter again,” Alice said with a sob.
“We had no idea they’d done so many bad things that the sheriff had arrested them before,” Adeline put in.
Jude exhaled loudly. “I hope they told the truth when they said they haven’t . . . violated you,” he said. His voice was thick with worry. Silence hung like storm clouds as he awaited his daughters’ response.
“We’ve always found ways to sidetrack them,” Alice mumbled. “But today, if you hadn’t shown up . . .”
“They were really drunk, and determined to take us to some motel down the road,” Adeline finished in a tight voice. “I’ve never been so scared in my life.”
“We were so glad to see you come in with Uncle Jeremiah, Dat,” Alice admitted in a quavery voice. “You and Leah were right about them all along, and we were too stupid to see it. We—we didn’t know it was illegal for us to be at the pool hall.”
“Jah, we thought we were just being grown up, drinking beer like everybody else who was there,” Adeline said.
“We don’t even like beer,” Alice whispered, grimacing.
Leah kept stirring biscuit batter to keep from crying. She didn’t want to think about how the morning might have gone had Jude and Jeremiah not arrived with the sheriff in time.
“Well, part of that was Rick’s negligence for not asking to see proof of your age. Some things never change,” Jude said with a disgusted shake of his head. “But some of the blame is mine. When we found out you’d been going to the pool hall, I should’ve told you straight out that underage drinking is against the law—and I should’ve read the riot act to Rick about it, too.”
Adeline sighed, resting her head in her hands. “You and Leah did tell us we shouldn’t go there—”
“But we didn’t want to listen,” Alice said glumly. “We thought being in rumspringa meant we could try anything. We never dreamed that Phil and Dexter would turn so mean.”
“Jah, they said they killed the cows to get our attention because we weren’t answering the cell phone,” Adeline recounted shrilly.
“They figured we’d come to the pool hall, and we were stupid enough to play right into their plan,” Alice said with a loud sigh. “I—I’m sorry we’ve caused you so much trouble, Dat. Denki for saving our hides today.”
“Jah, can you believe us—trust us—when we say we’ve learned our lesson?” Adeline asked plaintively. “If you want us to confess at church, Uncle Jeremiah, we’ll be on our knees.”
“We need all the forgiveness we can get,” Alice agreed. “From you two, and Leah as well.”
After several moments of silence, Leah looked up from rolling and cutting biscuits. She believed the twins were sincere—and the torn expression on Jude’s face told her he was near tears, relieved to hear what his daughters were saying after dealing with their misbehavior these past few months.
Jeremiah clasped his hands on the table and leaned toward the girls. “I believe God has already heard your confession,” he said softly. “This might be a gut time for all of us to offer Him our thanks for His presence and guidance this morning.”
Leah laid aside her biscuit cutter and stood at the counter with her floured hands clasped and her head bowed. We owe You so much, dear Lord, she prayed. Help the girls go forward from this difficult morning to live their lives with Your purpose in their hearts and Your wisdom in their minds. Guide us as we parent them, too.
When Jude released the breath he’d been holding, Leah felt the tension in the kitchen dissipate. The gurgling of the percolator reminded her that normal life could go on, now that Alice and Adeline realized what serious mistakes they’d made.
“I’m pleased—and relieved—to hear you talking this way, girls,” Jude finally said to them. “I feel as though my real daughters have been restored to me.”
Adeline and Alice nodded, thumbing away tears. It was a solemn moment, after confession and forgiveness had cleared the air and wiped the slate clean. But now that the serious talk had taken place, Leah had something to add.
She went up behind the girls and wrapped her arms around their slender shoulders, resting her head between theirs. “We’ve had our ups and downs, girls,” she began in a voice thick with emotion, “but I want you to know how grateful I am that you took a stand for my cattle—for me—this morning. It’s real progress that you got angry for me instead of at me, and I—I love you for it.”
Alice and Adeline clasped her arms. Leah nearly fainted when they kissed her cheeks.
“Well, there’s a picture,” Jude said softly.
The girls chuckled nervously as they released Leah. “Guess we should help you fix dinner,” Adeline said. “After all this excitement, I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.”
Alice smiled wryly as she rose from her chair. “What I want to know,” she said, “is how Dat and Uncle Jeremiah could play such an awesome game of pool! Dex and Phil didn’t stand a chance.”
Leah smiled and went to pour coffee before finishing her biscuits. Jude and Jeremiah were chuckling as they formulated an answer to the question.
“When we were growing up in this house, there was a pool table in the basement,” Jeremiah began. “Our dat bought us a used table when we hit our rumspringa, on the condition that neither of us would learn to drive a car, or buy one and park it somewhere else so he and Mamm wouldn’t know about it.”
“It wasn’t a common thing for an Amish family to own a pool table,” Jude pointed out, “but our dat reasoned that learning how to make accurate shots would keep us boys at home, out of trouble, and it would improve our concentration.”
“And because we weren’t betting any money,” Jeremiah continued, “we considered it a family game the same as Monopoly or Scrabble would be. Truth be told, your Mammi Margaret got to be a pretty gut shot—although she never talked about that with her lady friends.”
Leah’s eyes widened. The image of Margaret Shetler bending over a pool table with a cue stick in her hand was almost more than she could imagine.
“It’s only fair that we confess to visiting the pool hall now and again, because it got sort of boring just playing members of the family,” Jude admitted.
“And—as you girls saw today,” Jeremiah said with a smile, “English fellows can’t believe that we Amish would know the first thing about shooting pool, so we used that to our advantage now and again. Hustling wasn’t an honorable way to win a little spending money—”
“But we were playing by the rules,” Jude insisted, “and as long as we let some time go by between our pool hall visits, nobody called us out. English fellows didn’t want to admit they’d been snookered by a couple of Amish boys. As long as we bought an occasional beer, Rick turned a blind eye.”
Jeremiah nodded as he recalled those days. “We eventually grew up and sold the table, but I’m glad our pool shooting skills bought the sheriff sometime this morning.”
“And I was glad Rick didn’t realize who we were until Sheriff Banks made the arrest,” Jude admitted. “It all worked out. And it’ll be fine with me if I never enter that smelly old grease pit again.”
Chapter 24
The next morning Leah was glad when Jude offered to drive her to Abner Gingerich’s meat market and assist with butchering the rest of the cattle she’d lost. She felt tired and emotionally wrung out after their ordeal with the twins—mere days after Betsy had been taken away—and even though everything had turned out for the best, the idea of butchering all those carcasses alone overwhelmed her.
“Awfully nice of Abner to come fetch those cows yesterday,” Jude remarked as the rig rolled toward Cedar Creek.
“I couldn’t think of any other way to get all that meat refrigerated, once the twins took off for the pool hall, so I called him,” Leah explained. “He’s always been such a gut neighbor—so helpful to Mama and me after Dat passed.”
Ordinarily the clip-clop, clip-clop of hooves upon the pavement soothed Leah, but she felt a headache coming on. She tried to dismiss it, because with all the cutting, processing, and packaging they had to do, there was no time for feeling puny. When they arrived at the butcher shop, Jude helped her down from the rig and she allowed herself the luxury of lingering for a few extra moments in his embrace.
“You all right, Leah?” he asked softly. “You don’t seem to be your perky, spunky self this morning.”
Leah sighed, resting her head on his sturdy shoulder. “I suspect my perk and spunk all went toward getting the twins back home safely and then rejoicing when they let me hug them,” she replied. “It was a roller-coaster ride of a day.”
“Jah, it sure was,” Jude agreed. “I’m glad I don’t have an auction to call today, because I suspect I’d be running out of energy by noon. I’d rather spend the day helping you, anyway.”
When he kissed her lightly, Leah felt better. She took her butchering knives from the buggy, and as they entered Abner’s butcher shop, a bell tinkled above the door. Leah heard two voices coming from the room behind the refrigerated glass cases that displayed whole chickens and cuts of beef, pork, and lamb.
Abner peered out at them, wiping his hands on a towel. “Gut morning, folks! Hope you don’t mind that Uncle Vernon and I got a head start on your cows,” he called out cheerfully. “I’ve got white coats for you to wear so you won’t get your clothes dirty—and to keep you warmer.”
Leah hadn’t expected Bishop Vernon to be working with them, but another set of hands would make their butchering go faster. As she and Jude went down a short hallway and entered the refrigerated butchering room, she shivered. “Oh my, it’s chilly in here!” she said as Abner helped her into her coat. “Denki for fetching the cows and keeping them cold for me. This way, we’re certain the meat will be fresh, without any spoilage.”
Bishop Vernon looked up from the large hindquarter he was working on. “I was mighty sorry to hear about the trouble you folks had yesterday,” he said with a shake of his head. “I trust your chicks are back in the nest, hopefully sadder but wiser? Jeremiah called to share the highlights of your encounter at the pool hall, you see.”
Leah smiled to herself. If the bishops of Morning Star and Cedar Creek had discussed yesterday’s ordeal, it wouldn’t be long before most of the folks in both districts got wind of their run-in with Dexter and Phil.
“I’m pleased to say that Alice and Adeline have turned over a new leaf,” Jude replied as he donned his white coat. “They were so repentant, they even offered to come with us today to help with the butchering, seeing’s how they felt partly to blame for the way Leah’s cattle got slaughtered.”
“I was amazed at their offer,” Leah put in, “because the twins despise anything to do with animal waste or blood. I suggested that they and Stevie could help us by planting more of the garden instead.”
When the bishop nodded, his snow-white beard drifted like a cloud over his chest. “That’s a step in the right direction. Any indication that they’ve seen the error of socializing with those English fellows? Jeremiah made it sound as though those two were on a first-name basis with the sheriff.”
“Jah, they’re a couple of bad apples,” Jude said with a sigh. “I was appalled that my girls found them the least bit attractive—but that’s behind them now.”
“They’ve folded all of their English clothes, and we boxed them up to take to the Goodwill store—along with their jewelry,” Leah added as she sharpened her knives. “I—I was amazed that Adeline and Alice allowed me to hug them, and that they no longer seem to consider me that impossibly stinky, stupid woman their dat hitched up with last December.”
Vernon’s laughter echoed in the cold concrete room. “I’m pleased to hear that,” the white-haired bishop said. “The girls’ attitudes were my biggest concern when you and Jude married, and it sounds as though you’re finally on the road to becoming a happy family.”
When Jude gazed at Leah, his smile made her quiver inside. “Jah, except for the house seeming way too quiet without Betsy, our home has already taken on a peacefulness I couldn’t have foreseen a few weeks ago,” he said as he began to strip the skin from the carcass on Abner’s second worktable. “I believe the kids have accepted Leah as their mamm now. And I believe God will grant us even more exciting possibilities in the days ahead.”
Rather than speculating on what her husband meant, Leah focused on removing the meat from a steer’s neck and shoulder. The smaller pieces from the neck would be ground or cut into stew meat, while the larger sections around the shoulder would make nice roasts and steaks.
“I’ll be pleased to sell as much of this meat as you’d like me to, Leah,” Abner said as he deftly plied his knife around the flank he was butchering. “What I don’t sell fresh in the next few days, I can package and freeze for selling later—or to keep for you folks, if you don’t have space for it in your freezer at home. The meat from your grass-fed cattle is tender and well marbled, so the beef will be tastier than what folks can find in regular grocery stores.”
“I’d appreciate that,” Leah put in. “You’ve been such a help to us, Abner.”
“Another possibility is donating some packages of the meat to a couple of families in the Cedar Creek district who’ve met with misfortune recently,” Bishop Vernon suggested. “Over the weekend, Mose and Hannah Hartzler lost their home—including the jars of canned goods and their deep freezes—in a fire, and Rudy Ropp suffered a stroke I suspect he might not recover from.”
Leah’s eyes widened. “Oh my, I hadn’t heard that sad news, what with all the goings-on at our place,” she said. “Jah, I’d be grateful if you’d give those families a gut su
pply of this meat. They’ve got kids to feed.”
The four of them settled into a companionable routine, with Jude skinning the last few carcasses while Vernon and Leah removed the meat from the bones and Abner cut steaks and roasts. The men shared talk from around the Morning Star and Cedar Creek church districts, but Leah had to force herself to concentrate on her work, despite the fact that she’d been butchering since she was a young girl. Her headache sapped her energy and she had the sensation of working inside a bubble, somewhat removed from the men, as she tried to convince herself she didn’t feel queasy.
Something in the breakfast casserole the twins had fixed seemed to be upsetting her stomach. Trying not to draw attention to herself, Leah left the cold room and hurried to the bathroom in the hallway. She barely made it in time to vomit repeatedly in the toilet.
When she had nothing left in her stomach, Leah leaned against the wall for a few moments to settle herself. Why was she feeling so clammy and weak-kneed? She hoped she hadn’t caught the flu or—
“Is there some gut news you’re not telling us, Jude?” Bishop Vernon asked on the other side of the wall. “In all the years I’ve known Leah, I can’t recall that she’s ever gotten sick to her stomach.”
“Jah, ordinarily Leah’s got a strong constitution when it comes to butchering,” Abner put in.
“I can’t say for sure that we have happy news,” Jude replied with a chuckle. “But I intend for us to find out soon, because this isn’t the first time Leah’s thrown up recently.”
Leah’s eyes widened. Could she possibly be in the family way? She hadn’t been throwing up every morning, as she’d heard was common, yet she couldn’t deny that she’d gotten sick to her stomach, dizzy—or just cranky—several times over the past weeks.
Leah rinsed her face with cool water and took a few deep breaths. It was embarrassing to think the fellows in the next room might’ve figured out her condition before she’d thought of it—but she hadn’t dodged men’s remarks and opinions before, and she didn’t intend to start now. She returned to the refrigerated room as though nothing had been amiss and resumed butchering alongside Jude, Abner, and Vernon.
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